Mako Biography

Born Makoto Iwamatsu, December 10, 1933, in Kobe, Japan; died of
esophageal cancer, July 21, 2006, in Somis, CA. Actor. The Japanese actor
known simply as Mako enjoyed a long career in Hollywood that began at a
time when he and other Asian performers were relegated to stock
characters. One of just a handful of Japanese performers ever to be
nominated for an Academy Award, he was instrumental in pushing through
Hollywood's invisible barriers that kept Asian-American actors in
stereotype-reinforcing roles. One of his final performances came as the
commander of the imperial Japanese navy in the 2001 action flick
Pearl Harbor
.

The future actor was born Makoto Iwamatsu in the Japanese city of Kobe in
1933. His parents went to the United States to study art in New York City
while he stayed behind with his grandparents.
America's entry into World War II came when he was seven years old,
when Japanese planes bombed a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in
December of 1941, and with the two countries officially at war Mako was
unable to join his parents for several more years. Finally, at the age of
15 he was reunited with them in New York City.

As a young man, Mako planned to become an architect, and enrolled at the
Pratt Institute of New York City. When a fellow student asked him to help
design a set for a play, he found himself drawn to theater and immersed
himself in it to the point where his architecture studies suffered, and he
lost his student draft deferment. He spent two years in the U.S. Army, and
upon returning to civilian life settled in California and began studying
drama at the renowned Pasadena Playhouse. As an Asian American, however,
he was usually cast in stock characters in the first film and television
jobs he landed. His most prominent work was in the popular television
sitcom
McHale's Navy
in the early 1960s, in which he played various Japanese soldier or
officer parts in the World War II-set series.

Mako's breakout part came in
The Sand Pebbles
, a 1966 movie that starred Steve McQueen as an engineer on an American
gunboat stationed in China during the 1920s. Mako was cast as Po-han, an
engine-room worker on board the ship, and though his character was
deferential to McQueen's character and the other sailors,
"most reviewers hailed the performance, saying it transcended the
role's stereotypical confines," noted the
New York Times
' Margalit Fox. One pivotal scene involved a fistfight in which
Po-han triumphs over his much larger American opponent, and it helped him
earn a nomination for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.

Reacting to the dearth of solid roles for Asian-heritage thespians, Mako
co-founded the East West Players in 1965, the first Asian-American theater
company. He served as its artistic director until 1989, and continued to
work in Hollywood, amassing more than 140 screen and television credits
over his long career. Some of his best-known roles came in the hit
television series
M*A*S*H
in the 1970s, and as Akiro the wizard in the
Conan the Barbarian
movies of the 1980s that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. Broadway
audiences saw him in
Pacific Overtures
, the 1976 musical from Stephen Sondheim that retold the story of the
establishment of diplomatic and trade ties between the United States and
Japan in the 1850s. He was the play's Reciter, or narrator, but
also appeared in other parts and was nominated for a Tony Award as Best
Actor in a Musical for it.

Other roles for Mako included the 1997 Brad Pitt movie
Seven Years in Tibet
, 2001's
Pearl Harbor
, and
Memoirs of a Geisha
in 2005. He also served as the voice of Uncle Iroh in
Avatar: The Last Airbender
, the animated series from Nickelodeon. He died at the age of 72 from
esophageal cancer on July 21, 2006, at his home in Somis, California.
Survivors include his wife, Shizuko Hoshi, a dancer, choreographer and
actress, and their two daughters, Sala and Mimosa. His East West Players
company had become a respected training ground for scores of
Asian-American performers. "We've been fighting against
stereotypes from Day One at East West," he told the
Los Angeles Times
in 1986, according to his obituary writer, Jocelyn Y. Stewart.
"That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we
are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes—waiter,
laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain."